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1 perry 1 GNOME
2 !!!GNOME
3 NAME
4 SYNOPSIS
5 DESCRIPTION
6 ARCHITECTURE
7 HISTORY
8 MAILING LISTS
9 BUGS
10 AUTHOR
11 ----
12 !!NAME
13
14
15 GNOME - The GNU Network Object Model Environment
16 !!SYNOPSIS
17
18
19 __gnome-session__
20 !!DESCRIPTION
21
22
23 The __gnome-session__ program launches and initializes
24 the GNOME desktop environment. This program is usually
25 executed from your X initialization file. If your system is
26 configured to use __gdm__ (the GNOME display and login
27 manager) you can start your GNOME session by selecting the
28 Gnome login profile.
29
30
31 If the special __WINDOW_MANAGER__ environment variable is
32 set, the gnome-session system will use that as the session
33 window manager. Otherwise it will default to your system's
34 configured window manager.
35
36
37 GNOME is a collection of libraries and applications. A
38 collection of these form the GNOME Desktop: an easy to use,
39 yet powerful desktop environment for Unix systems. You can
40 find up to date information about GNOME in
41 http://www.gnome.org. You can find more information about
42 the GNU project in http://www.gnu.org.
43
44
45 From a user's point of view, the GNOME desktop consists of a
46 desktop metaphor, a file manager and an easy way to launch
47 applications installed on the system. Various desktop tools
48 are provided with the GNOME desktop to take advantage of a
49 computer system.
50
51
52 GNOME's desktop metaphor allows the desktop to be used as a
53 place to temporarily storing files, shortcuts to programs
54 and documents. Drag and drop is an important part of the
55 system; we have tried to make the system as intuitive as
56 possible.
57
58
59 The session management in GNOME will automatically restore
60 all of the applications you were running when you log in
61 into the system again. With session managed applications,
62 the user can turn off or logout from the system and when he
63 logs in again, he will see the same desktop he had
64 before.
65
66
67 GNOME supports themes that allow users to change the skin of
68 an application: the look of applications in the GNOME
69 desktop can be configured to look in the way that more
70 pleases the user: it is just a few mouse-clicks away. You
71 can choose from a wide range of GTK themes. A web site has
72 been devoted to this: http://gtk.themes.org
73 !!ARCHITECTURE
74
75
76 The GNOME architecture addresses a number of problems and
77 missing features found on Unix systems and it uses a number
78 of components to achieve this:
79
80
81 __glib__
82
83
84 This is the foundation library that provides portability
85 functions, a collection of reusable abtract types for C
86 programmers and a main loop abstraction. For more
87 information see
88 http://www.gtk.org/rdp/glib/book1.html
89
90
91 __ORBit__
92
93
94 This is the CORBA implementation used in GNOME. CORBA
95 provides basic RPC functionality and it is the foundation
96 for the component model and the compound document and
97 document model systems. For more information see
98 http://www.labs.redhat.com/orbit.
99
100
101 __GTK+__
102
103
104 This is the GUI toolkit used by GNOME. It works on Unix and
105 Win32 systems and other ports are being worked on to lighter
106 windowing systems. You can find more information on
107 http://www.gtk.org/
108
109
110 __gtk-engines__
111
112
113 The GTK+ toolkit has support for changing the apperance of
114 application by providing support for themes and theme
115 engines. See http://gtk.themes.org for a collection of
116 readily-available themes.
117
118
119 __Imlib__
120
121
122 The graphics library used to load, save, manipulate and
123 render images in GNOME applications. It includes routines to
124 do fast drawing and use a limited set of colors from low-end
125 displays. We expect this library to be replaced soon with
126 the more modern libart.
127
128
129 __libart_lgpl__
130
131
132 An imaging library used for implementing various
133 high-quality imaging components in GNOME.
134
135
136 __gnome-libs__
137
138
139 These libraries are the core libraries that provide the
140 uniformity of the applications. They are divided in five:
141 libgnome (for non-GUI dependant code), libgnomeui (for GUI
142 dependant code), zvt (the xterm terminal emulator),
143 gtk-xmhtml (an HTML rendering engine) and libgnorba that
144 implements the CORBA object activation and
145 registry.
146
147
148 __libglade__
149
150
151 This library enables programmers to create their interfaces
152 using the Glade GUI desginer and loading at runtime the user
153 interfaces.
154
155
156 __gnome-print__
157
158
159 The GNOME printing architecture implements a Postscript
160 imaging model with two extensions: alpha transparency and
161 anti-aliasing (all of this is done by using the libart_lgpl
162 imaging library.
163
164
165 __gnome-xml__
166
167
168 This library provides GNOME application with an API to load,
169 parse and walk an XML file.
170
171
172 __Docbook__
173
174
175 GNOME documentation is written in the Docbook SGML DTD. You
176 can find more about this at
177 http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro.html
178
179
180 __GNU gettext__
181
182
183 GNOME uses the GNU gettext to allow applications to be
184 localized for various countries and languages.
185
186
187 __Bonobo__
188
189
190 Bonobo is the GNOME architecture for creating reusable
191 software components and compound documents. It was designed
192 and implemented to address the needs and problems of the
193 free-software community for developing large-scale
194 applications.
195
196
197 More information can be found at
198 http://www.helixcode.com/tech/bonobo.php3
199
200
201 GNOME is window manager independant. This means that the
202 GNOME desktop and the GNOME tools will work with any window
203 manager. Window manager can optionally provide a number of
204 features that will make the user's desktop a more pleasant
205 experience. The GNOME window manager hint spec is available
206 at:
207 http://www.gnome.org/devel/gnomewm/book1.html
208 !!HISTORY
209
210
211 There were two projects that lead to the creation of origins
212 of what became the GNOME project: the libapp project and the
213 old-GNOME project. The former was a project to provide
214 standard workstation-like services to applications. The
215 old-GNOME project was intended to provide a component model
216 for Unix systems. These were projects some of us had
217 discussed but never actually implemented.
218
219
220 Enter KDE, a project that wanted to make Unix usable as a
221 desktop machine. Sadly they chose the proprietary and
222 non-free toolkit Qt as the foundation for their work. It was
223 a giant step backwards in terms of software
224 freedom[[1].
225
226
227 In response, the GNOME project was started later to create a
228 completely free desktop environment, and various early ideas
229 were reused.
230
231
232 Early talks about the creation of GNOME involved some
233 recognized free software leaders: Erik Troan and Mark Ewing
234 of Red Hat software, Richard Stallman of the Free Software
235 Foundation, and Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball of the GIMP
236 project. We launched the project after considering the
237 various alternatives that could be tried.
238
239
240 The original call for developers, which included the team of
241 programmers working on the GNU Image Manipulation Program
242 (GIMP [[GIMP]), the Guile mailing list and the free software
243 mailing lists. This is important because the mix of people
244 that were part of the original GNOME team had a good
245 background on free software issues, graphics and language
246 design.
247
248
249 Red Hat created the Advanced Development Laboratories
250 division on January 1998 (http://www.labs.redhat.com). RHAD
251 labs was initially created to help out in the development of
252 the GNOME project.
253
254
255 We made releases of the GNOME source base since the
256 beginning of the project. During the development of GNOME,
257 the group has produced a number of libraries and components
258 that are useful to provide integration, and consistency
259 troughout the system.
260
261
262 GNOME 1.0 was released after eighteen months of development
263 in March 1999. Updates and fixes are continously released;
264 At the time of this writing, the GNOME 1.0 series is at
265 version 1.0.5.
266
267
268 GNOME 1.0 marks the contract between GNOME developers and
269 the user base to provide a stable API on top of which new
270 applications can be developed. Software developers will be
271 able to take advantage of all the functions available in the
272 library, and they can be sure that their applications will
273 continue to work in the future.
274
275
276 In May, 1999, International GNOME support was launched: a
277 company that offers contractual support for the GNOME system
278 founded by Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza.
279
280
281 In October, 1999 an updated version of GNOME codenamed
282
283
284 In October 1999, GNOME Support became Helix Code, Inc.
285 (http://www.helixcode.com) and started work on Evolution (an
286 integrated groupware solution) and Helix GNOME (a continous
287 updated distribution of GNOME for various operating
288 systems).
289
290
291 In November 1999, Eazel was introduced to the GNOME
292 community (http://www.eazel.com) founded by Andy Hertzfeld,
293 Bart Decrem and Mike Boich to provide a new desktop for
294 GNOME: the Nautilus project.
295
296
297 Also in November, the Bonobo component system started to
298 become used in the GNOME project, and it became the
299 foundation for various of the most advanced GNOME
300 projects.
301
302
303 In March 2000, Mathieu Lacage organized the
304
305
306 In March 2000, The GNOME Steering Committee was created to
307 overwsee the development and deployment of GNOME
308 2.0
309
310
311 In May 2000, GNOME 1.2 codenamed
312 !!MAILING LISTS
313
314
315 There are various mailing lists used by the GNOME project to
316 coordinate the development of GNOME, you can subscribe to
317 these lists by sending mail to the
318
319
320 __gnome-announce-list@gnome.org__
321
322
323 Where general announcements about the GNOME system are done.
324 A good way of staying in touch with the developments of the
325 system
326
327
328 __gnome-list@gnome.org__
329
330
331 General discussion of the GNOME system.
332
333
334 __gnome-devel-list@gnome.org__
335
336
337 Discussions on the development of the GNOME system and on
338 writing GNOME applications.
339
340
341 __gnome-gui-list@gnome.org__
342
343
344 Discussion about user interface improvements for the GNOME
345 system.
346
347
348 __gnome-components-list@gnome.org__
349
350
351 Discussions about Bonobo: the component and compound
352 document architecture of GNOME.
353
354
355 __cvs-commits-list@gnome.org__
356
357
358 Used to keep track of changes to the GNOME CVS source code
359 repository.
360
361
362 There are many other lists that discuss specific parts of
363 the project, for a complete list, check
364 http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists
365 !!BUGS
366
367
368 To report bugs or suggestions you would like to see in the
369 GNOME system, please use the command __gnome-bug__ to
370 send us information about the problem you are experimenting,
371 or go directly to our bug tracking system on the Web at
372 http://bugs.gnome.org
373 !!AUTHOR
374
375
376 GNOME has been developed by a large number of free software
377 programmers, users and enthusiasts on the Internet. The
378 __guname__ program lists some of the contributors to the
379 system.
380
381
382 This manual page has been written by Miguel de Icaza
383 (miguel@gnu.org)
384 ----
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